Social Media giant, Twitter announced Monday it will start labeling tweets about COVID-19 vaccines that are found to be misleading and ban users who persist in spreading such misinformation, Njenje Media News reports.
The messaging service also introduced a “strike system” that at the end will permanently ban a user after the fifth offending tweet.
“We believe the strike system will help to educate the public on our policies and further reduce the spread of potentially harmful and misleading information on Twitter,” the San Francisco-based company said in a blog post.
“Particularly for repeated moderate and high-severity violations of our rules.”
The new rule will have Twitter users being notified when a tweet is labeled as misleading or needs to be removed for breaking the platform’s rules, earning a strike, with the second and third strikes resulting in the violating account being blocked for 12 hours.
The fourth violation will have the account sidelined for seven days while a fifth and final strike will get the account permanently suspended, Twitter said.
Twitter late last year began calling on users to remove dangerously misleading Covid-19 claims, including suggestions that vaccines are used to harm or control people.
The service also targeted baseless claims about the adverse effects of vaccines or questioning the reality of the pandemic.
